Monwabisi Sithaba

Cloud and DevSecOps Engineer specializing in designing, building, and operating hybrid and public cloud platforms on Microsoft Azure. Experienced in automating infrastructure deployments, enforcing cloud governance in Azure Landing Zones, and containerizing microservices using Kubernetes. Possess the ability to lead DevSecOps transformations by integrating static code analysis, vulnerability scanning, and identity management into CI/CD pipelines.

Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including architects, security, and FinOps, to ensure high availability, strict SLA adherence, and cost-efficient cloud consumption. Backed by a solid foundation in traditional systems administration, bridging legacy on-premises infrastructure with modern cloud-native solutions.

Cloud Engineer - DevSecOps Engineer at MTN South Africa (2024-07 – Present)

• Partnered with project owners and architects to design, review, and approve standard IaC cloud templates (Pulumi/Terraform), securing Cloud Architecture Review Board (CARB) approval for Azure Landing Zone deployments.
• Provisioned and managed Azure infrastructure using Pulumi/Terraform, ensuring all deployments natively integrated with Azure Landing Zone architectures and Microsoft Azure and Nephos policies.
• Engineered automated GitHub Actions and ArgoCD GitOps pipelines to deliver declarative deployments for.NET, Java, and Node.js applications across Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Function Apps, and Azure Storage static web applications. Leveraging Azure Service Principals for authentication and tagging production releases with manual ServiceNow CR numbers to maintain full audit compliance under strict SLAs.
• Managed Azure Kubernetes clusters with RBAC access using Rancher while providing operational support to resolve platform, networking, updates, and performance incidents. Monitored and managed Azure resources, including AKS, Function Apps, Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB, Application Gateway, Azure Front Door, Storage Accounts, Key Vaults, Azure Service Bus, and VMs, etc to maintain high availability.
• Deployed and managed containerized microservices on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) using Helm charts and YAML configurations. Implemented Traefik/Nginx Ingress Controllers for dynamic traffic routing and Azure Container Registry (ACR) for secure image lifecycle management.
• Deployed and managed event-driven serverless and containerized microservices on Azure App Services and AKS integrated with Azure Service Bus, Apache Kafka, PostgreSQL, Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB, and Azure Cache for Redis.
• Embedded Trivy, SonarQube, and GitHub Advanced Security into deployment pipelines to enforce policy-as-code and proactively remediate subscription-level security risks before production delivery.
• Secured sensitive data by centralizing secrets, certificates, and API keys in Azure Key Vault, enforcing controlled access across all applications.
• Configured enterprise Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions using Okta, Entra ID (Azure AD), and Azure B2B, implementing secure SSO and MFA workflows to streamline user authentication and external partner access across global applications.
• Configured Azure Front Door and Azure Application Gateway with custom WAF policies to protect cloud and application endpoints, ensuring secure and globally protected application delivery.
• Implemented monitoring and alerting using Azure Monitor, Application Insights, and Datadog to track cloud health, report on infrastructure performance, and ensure strict SLA adherence.
• Partnered with a FinOps team to manage cloud budgets, identifying cost-saving opportunities in development and test environments and executing capacity planning and right-sizing initiatives using Azure Advisor and Azure metrics forecasting utilization trends to prevent bottlenecks while optimizing spending across all environments.

DevOps Engineer at CompuGroup Medical South Africa (2022-01 – 2024-06)

• Automated the provisioning and management of AWS infrastructure like ECS, S2 and EKS using Terraform, improving deployment speed and consistency.
• Designed and implemented CI/CD pipelines using Azure Pipelines to automate build, test, and deployment processes.
• Containerized applications using Docker and orchestrated microservices on both EKS and on-premise kubeadm clusters.
• Established monitoring and alerting for infrastructure and applications through the ELK stack and visualise using Grafana, Prometheus.
• Administered and maintained a virtualized development environment using VMware.

Systems Engineer at Techsoft International (2019-03 – 2021-12)

• Administered and supported a hybrid environment of Windows and Linux servers, performing maintenance, monitoring, and backups.
• Deployed and managed web applications on Azure App Services and on-premise IIS servers.
• Managed and maintained SQL Server and PostgreSQL databases, including deployments, updates, and performance tuning.
• Installed, configured, and administered backend systems for TIBCO Nimbus, BW, and BPM.

ND in Information Technology – Durban University of Technology